Wednesday, January 10, 2018

Visual Storytelling: Setpiece Scenes

There’s a saying in
Hollywood that “If you have six great scenes, you have a movie.”

Filmmakers take that “six great scenes” concept very literally. These setpiece
scenes—so named because before the advent of location shooting, elaborate sets were built as backdrops to key
scenes—are also often called the “trailer scenes” or the “money scenes” (as
opposed to “money shots” – that’s a whole different post!). As incensed as I am
personally about how trailers these days give every single bit of the movie
away, I understand that this is essential movie advertising: those trailer
scenes have to seduce the potential audience by giving a good sense of the
experience the movie is promising to deliver.

As a screenwriter, when
I go in to pitch a movie or television show, I concentrate on the setpieces,
because I know if I can make the producers/studio/director SEE those scenes, I’ll
get the job. It’s essential moviemaking.

What does that have to do with you as an author?
Well, when I moved from screenwriting to writing novels, I took that concept of
setpiece scenes with me. I’m often told that my thrillers are extremely visual
and cinematic; I’m pretty sure that the comment I get most often from readers
is “I could see the whole story like a movie playing in my head.” I absolutely
feel that my job as an author is to put a movie into my readers’ heads — and I can’t
count the number of times I’ve heard editors say that’s what they’re looking
for, too.

I believe any author, at
any professional level, will benefit from studying this filmmaking concept.

Authors tend to think
that their craft is about words. But words really aren’t the point of
storytelling at all – they’re only a tool to convey images, emotion, action.
Location is definitely part of the art of creating setpieces. My first
thrillers are on the supernatural side, and the house in a haunted house story
(or a haunted dorm story like my ghost story The Harrowing) is every bit as much a character as the living ones.
I’ve gone so far as to go live for weeks in a haunted mansion to collect
realistic detail for the haunted mansion I was depicting in my poltergeist
thriller, The Unseen. Next week
I’m heading out to Death Valley to do visual research for the 6thHuntress thriller.
But a really great setpiece scene is a lot more than just visually dazzling.
It’s thematic, too, such as the prison (dungeon for the criminally insane) in The Silence of the Lambs. That is much
more than your garden variety prison. It’s a labyrinth of twisty staircases and
creepy corridors. And it’s hell: Clarice goes through – count ‘em – seven
gates, down, down, down under the ground to get to Lecter. Because after all,
she’s going to be dealing with the devil, isn’t she? And the labyrinth is a
classic symbol of an inner psychological journey, just exactly what Clarice is
about to go through. And Lecter is a monster, like the Minotaur, so putting him
smack in the center of a labyrinth makes us unconsciously equate him with a
mythical beast, something both more and less than human. The visuals of that
setpiece express all of those themes perfectly (and others, too) so the scene
is working on all kinds of visceral, emotional, subconscious levels. And all
these visuals were on Thomas Harris’s page before they were translated to film.
If you watch or rewatch the erotic thriller Sea
Of Love, you’ll see how the storytellers work the sea images and the love
images throughout the film. The film is often shot in blue tones and against
backdrops of wide panes of glass, with moving shadows - all creating an
undersea or aquarium effect, especially in the suspense scenes. The story
explores themes of love, including obsessive love, and addiction – sex
addiction and alcoholism. There are repeating visuals of bottles, glasses,
drinking, nudity, erotic art, X-rated movie theaters, hookers.

The Harry Potter books and films are so crammed full of visual imagery it would
take a book to go into it all (there probably is one, in fact...) The books
play with all the classic symbols of witches, wizards and magic: owls, cats,
gnome, newts, feathers, wands, crystals, ghosts, shapeshifters, snakes, frogs,
rats, brooms (I don’t really have to keep going, do I?). Look at The Wizard of Oz (just the brilliant
contrast of the black and white world of Kansas and the Technicolor world of Oz
says volumes). Look at what Barbara Kingsolver does in Prodigal Summer, where images of fecundity and the, well,
prodigiousness of nature overflow off the pages, revealing characters and
conflicts and themes. Look at what Robert Towne does with water in Chinatown—and also, try watching that
movie sometime with Oedipus in mind… the very specific parallels will blow you
away. Take a look at Groundhog Day,
which constantly provides groundhog images, images of stopped or handless
clocks (and that malevolent clock radio!), an ice image of the eye of God,
anthropomorphic weather.

In film, every movie has a production designer: one artist (and these people are genius level, let me tell you) who is responsible, in consultation with the director and with the help of sometimes a whole army of production artists, for the entire look of the film - every color, costume, prop, set choice.

With a book, guess who's the production designer?

I am. You are. The author is.
As a screenwriter, I was used to having producers tell me a scene had to be set
someplace else because it would be too expensive to shoot. But as an
author I have the incredible advantage of an unlimited production budget.
Whatever settings, crowds, mechanical devices, alien attacks or natural
disasters I choose to depict, my only budget constraint is in my imagination.
The most powerful directors in Hollywood would kill for a fraction of that
power. Theoretically, they can’t even begin to compete.
So I approach setting as a production designer. My Thriller Award-nominated
Huntress series (Huntress Moon, Blood
Moon, Cold Moon, Bitter Moon, Hunger
Moon) follows a haunted FBI agent’s interstate manhunt for what he believes
may be a female serial killer. I get to show off the staggering beauty of my
home state of California, and I have a lot of fun with locations. I get a lot
of raves about a key scene that takes place in a butterfly colony in a
eucalyptus grove. Now, growing up in California as I have, I couldn’t
very well set a thriller on the central California coast and not use the
monarch grove, and the visuals are breathtaking - but the monarchs also make a
great metaphor for my killer. In another key scene (in Blood Moon) the memorial gardens of Golden Gate Park in San
Francisco add a ritual mysticism to the aftermath of a murder scene. And
using my beloved Haight Ashbury as a continuing setting in Blood Moon and Cold Moon
gives those books the hint of magical forces that is a subtle part of the
series.

So if you want to learn
how to build a great setpiece, how do you start?

(My students know the
answer to this one).

Make a list of setpieces
that have stayed with you. What are key scenes from movies that resonate on a
visual level? Make that list WITHOUT viewing the movies at first, and try to
write down everything you remember about a few of those key scenes.

Now watch one of those
scenes – repeatedly, and break it down. What’s going on in it, not just
visually, but thematically and emotionally? What key story conflicts are
happening, and how does the visual reflect that? What key story elements are
present in the scene (you’ll find many setpiece scenes contain several key
story elements at once).

And let me know - what
are some great examples of memorable setpieces for you – in books or films?
- Alex

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